Most of the farm mechanization & automation attempts tried so far have been with the approach of moving the resources to each location of the plants for every process to be executed. This is tedious and time-consuming work for humans. Even if machines are to do this work, it calls for very high degree of sophistication. The alternate approach is to position the resources all over the farm space wherever the plants are growing. This results in multiple installations of resources. For example, multiple water sprinklers/dispensers are setup to span the land area on a farm/lawn. This approach is cost prohibitive. Thus, both approaches have their drawbacks.
Throughout the world, more and more people want to live in urban areas. According to a study of demographic trends, by the year 2050, about 80% of the world's population will reside in urban areas and the world human population will increase by about 3 billion people. 20% more farming land would be required to feed the people. Most countries in the world will not have the extra land to increase the cultivation. Hence, effective land utilization should be the top priority in the farming methods and it should start from now. Building multistoried greenhouses or vertical farming only adds to more difficulties for the movement of resources and the plant processing and hence are not viable solutions.
Today's world is facing several competing requirements with regard to farming. While we want to make our world ‘green’, eat organic, nutritious foods, reduce atmospheric/noise pollution, reduce the cost of farm produce, etc. We expect wide variety of foods and available conveniently close to our homes. Further, we look to reduce our home energy consumption, reduce the cost of travel (to get the vegetables), etc. There is not an easy farming method to meet all these requirements.
The large-scale farms are setup only in rural areas due to the large land required and the low land cost. It adds to the transport costs on the farm produce for city dwelling people. Further, the transits into and out of cities add to the fossil-fuel usage and the air-pollution. Urban dwellers are unable to get fresh produce because of the delay in delivery. The biotechnological counter measures to increase the plants' shelf life & transit resistance often result in the plant strains with altered/less preferred flavor and texture of the produce. Hence, there is a strong need for farming in the cities, if possible close to every neighborhood.
According to a report, the lawn mowers in U.S. consume 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline annually. As regards lawns, there has not been an easy automation solution available for maintaining lawns. The watering, mowing, administering nutrients, etc. are done by manual labor. Gasoline-powered lawn mowers are predominantly used in spite of the associated expense and air & noise pollution. If there exists an electrically powered automated system for the maintenance of lawn, people would use such system rather than the current manual, gasoline-dependent, approach.